


Sad Later

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Merlin (TV), Parked (2010)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Crossover, M/M, Reincarnation, Underage - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cathal's life starts going to shit after he has to watch King Arthur die for the fifteenth time. And then his mum gets cancer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sad Later

**Author's Note:**

> After reading a lot of fanfiction, eating a lot of ice cream, and rewatching Parked while suffering from PMS, I had no choice but to write this dearie. I hope you like Cathal!Merlin as much as I do. I hope this makes you weep in agony. I love you all, I really do. Sorry for writing depressing fanfiction.
> 
>  **This fic contains major spoilers for the movie Parked.** I recommend watching the movie first, but this can also be read without having seen it, although I think you'll want to watch it after, and you totally should, it's a great movie. I personally think watching a movie after already basically knowing how it will end is a bit less fun than you could imagine, but hey. It's a good movie anyway, and you get to look at Colin Morgan.

Two weeks after his thirteenth birthday, Cathal wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping for breath, and his brain is _burning_ , because he can remember again. He's crying, and his heart is beating faster than he'd ever thought possible. He remembers every single time he's watched Arthur die, and he has never known such pain before. There is an uncomfortable, paralysing emptiness in the pit of his stomach, _oh fuck no magic, not this again_ , and all too vividly he can remember how the story of the Once and Future King and his sorcerer with no magic ended the last time he had to live it. _This isn't going to be a good lifetime_. Breathing is harder now. 

Merlin. That's his name. It seems unbelievable that just seconds ago, he couldn't remember it.

And Gods, he is _so old_. Past and present and future and recent and ancient and old and foreign and comfortable and unusual form a whirlwind in his head, he doesn't know where to look, he doesn't know what he knew two hours ago or what is real now, and he thinks about Arthur _right I need to find Arthur have I found Arthur yet_ and his Ma and his Da and his brother and _does he have a brother_ he doesn't remember anybody's name, and his mother's face keeps merging with the faces of the women who used to be his mother before and he can't make sense of anything anymore. He remembers that only twice has he ever got to die before Arthur. The last thing he realises before passing out is _right, no magic, we're gonna die young again aren't we_ , and _I might get to go first this time around_.

It takes him a few days to adjust. It takes some time to sort out his memories, what belongs to Cathal and what happened before he came along. The inexplicable hunger for magic is almost unbearable, and he laughs at himself for not feeling it before, because he can't ignore it now. It gets a little easier once you learn to breathe through it, but the gnawing need is there, and it doesn't leave him alone for a second. He starts smoking; he doesn't care that he's just thirteen because he really fucking needs it, and he's old enough to decide what matters. On the second night of his new-found consciousness, he steals a bottle of tequila from his father and drinks himself senseless because he can't bear staying sober and awake. It's like he's constantly on edge, nervous, shaky, short-tempered. Slowly but surely losing his mind. His Ma says it's puberty. Cathal has never felt older and more mature in his life, and he fucking hates it.

For the next two months, Cathal doesn't really concentrate on anything but looking for Arthur. He lets the life he used to know slip further away, and he doesn't even notice. Those things don't matter. Nothing matters until he's found his destined soulmate, his other half, the love of his life, of every single one he's ever lived. They are long months, and he very nearly gives up once or twice. He's only thirteen. He doesn't have magic; he doesn't have Arthur. He's lived long enough already, he's seen enough and done enough to just give up and know it would be an honourable thing to do. 

He doesn't give up, though. He grits his teeth and carries on, even when he's so exhausted and so unbelievably sad that he can hardly breathe. He's overwhelmed by his past lives, the memories that get tangled up with each other because this is still all new, trying to understand his life, trying to make sense of it all. There are many things that bring him restless nights. The choices he's made, the fatal mistakes that are down to only him. All the countless sins and regrets, the lives lost because of him, the black-edged guilt that is trying to drag him back into a darkness that is all too familiar. 

He doesn't follow. He's strong enough, and he needs to find Arthur. The time for all that is later, if ever. Maybe he could be happy. (He couldn't be, he knows it, never without his magic. But he can pretend. It gives him strength.)

When Cathal finally realises that his search is over, he can't help but cry in relief. At the sight of his King, he forgets his own name, because when he's with this man, he'll never be anything but what he's always been, and that cannot ever be changed. If someone would ask him where he lives now, how old he is, anything about his life, he wouldn't be able to answer. There is only Merlin, as there ever was; ready to serve his King as he always has. 

Arthur is sixteen. Beautiful, arrogant as ever. He's playing football, laughing, radiant in the sunlight. At some point, maybe after feeling an inexplicable tingle in the back of his neck, Arthur turns, and notices a skinny boy standing nearby. The boy is staring at them - him - with the power of a thousand burning suns, weight of the world visibly settled on his shoulders, smoking a cigarette. It takes Arthut a while to realise who he's looking at, and he can't turn his head away. 

When his memories catch up, his footie mates are suddenly not important at all.

Arthur walks to Merlin, swallowing back tears, and they embrace. Their reunion pulls itself apart from the world. For a moment they're a second out of sync with the rest of the universe, and Arthur holds a shaking Merlin in his arms, strokes his hair when he sobs his fear and anguish and _I don't have magic, I don't have fucking anything_ against his neck. Relieved, scared. Ready, but not really. Just a boy. Never just that.

"I need you," Merlin whispers. "You have no idea how empty I feel right now."

"My parents are out."

"Thank God."

Arthur takes Merlin to his place. There are posters of football players and bands and scantily dressed women on his walls. They fuck to Billy Talent, and Merlin pants and sobs and screams until he can't breathe anymore, because Arthur is right there, _finally_ , but he still feels painfully empty, and he realises that it probably means that it isn't going to get any better than this, not in this lifetime. Arthur comes hard, chanting Merlin's name against his neck, and Merlin squeezes his eyes shut and buries his hands in Arthur's hair.

"I just fucked a thirteen-year-old boy," Arthur laughs, a little panicked, when Merlin lights a cigarette, making room for Arthur to join him under the sheets.

"I'm older than I look," Merlin says, smile on his face, laughter in his ancient eyes. 

"I thought I was straight. I didn't even remember you before I saw you."

"You always think you're straight until you meet me."

"Not always! That time in Paris -"

"Well, most of the time, anyway." He shrugs, sighs, and closes his eyes. "Not that it matters. You're stuck with me now."

"I guess so." The silence spreads between them, comfortable and necessary, until Arthur mumbles against the matress, stroking Merlin's hair, "Hey, what's your name this time around?"

"Huh." Merlin frowns. It takes a while to remember that. "Cathal. Yours?"

"Arthur, actually. I love it when that happens. Juggling with two names can get a tad too psychedelic to my liking."

Merlin looks at him and smiles. Arthur is such a beautiful thing, and Merlin can't begin to remember the days he had, carrying the weight his memories without this man. It's the most horrible pain he's ever known. And that's not really true, but he doesn't want to think about that.

Merlin wraps his bony fingers around Arthur's wrist, squeezes like his life depends on it (and oh yes it does, it really does, but he doesn't want to think about that either, doesn't want to say it, not ever, because that would be a very foolish thing to do). He closes his eyes and shuffles closer. 

"I missed you, I really missed you," he mumbles, and presses a soft kiss on Arthur's shoulder. "Don't ever die."

"Merlin."

The pain in Arthur's voice is too much to bear, so Merlin just pulls him closer, and buries his face in Arthur's neck. His scent is familiar, still the same, and it drags the tears out of him once again. Merlin weeps silently against the man who has been the love of his life for so long that he doesn't care to remember; whom he's lost so often that it should not feel as unbearable as it does, not anymore. But it does. Whenever he dreams of dying, after watching Arthur die and living without him once again, they are the best dreams he's ever had. 

This time around, before too long, he's going to be looking forward to his own death, he can tell.

***

They are mostly happy. 

This is one of those times, Arthur says, when it's clear that they don't have anything worthwhile to busy themselves with. That makes things all the more difficult for Merlin, because he desperately needs _something_ to distract him from not having magic. It's something he thought he'd eventually get used to, but that's not happening, not happening, and he can't help but wait, still, although he's really given up. It's a headache that just won't _ever_ go away, a persistent itch that he just can't reach settled somewhere very deep inside him. It's a fire, and there is no water. 

He has Arthur, though, and that helps, if not enough. He has what he can remember of his past lives (although it mostly doesn't help at all, but instead just makes things worse because he can remember all the times he was happy, and it's unbearable, and what's the point in being happy if you're going to be so sad later). They have a lot of sex. Merlin smokes a lot, and is drunk very often. Arthur doesn't approve, but he hasn't got the heart to say anything about it, because he's seen it before. He doesn't really understand, not quite, but he wants to, and that makes all the difference.

They are mostly happy, but not always. Merlin has his bad days, and sometimes it all gets a bit too much for Arthur. They are in love as they ever were, but love isn't always easy, and it's almost never the thing you need most.

It doesn't last long. Merlin is sixteen when he's sitting by Arthur's bed in a hospital, holding his cold hand, watching the monitor screen with no heartbeat, tears stuck in his throat, the myriad of hospital sounds transforming into an unwelcoming, distracting buzz in his ears. He stares at Arthur's mum, wide-eyed, and when they ask him to leave, he does as he's told. 

His King is dead. Long live the King. 

He breaks down outside the hospital, lights a cigarette with shaking hands, cries and cries, forehead pressed against the cold brick wall. He couldn't have done anything to help, he tells himself, and refuses to believe it.

Cathal. His name is Cathal. He doesn't want anyone calling him anything else anymore. Not that anybody would. Not now that Arthur is gone.

He gets high later that night. It helps a little, but when it passes, the numbing grief returns; the gnawing emptiness of _no magic_ that has only grown stronger now that he has no Arthur comes back hundredfold, at least. Cathal gets drunk, listens to Billy Talent, and thinks about heroin. It doesn't seem that far away anymore. He knows exactly how much pain he can take before turning to his old friend for comfort. He can remember all too well what happened the last time.

The next three years pass in a haze. Cathal doesn't spend a lot of time sober. His school starts going to shit, and then he just stops going. Nothing interests him. It's like he's given up on life and just waiting for his impending death, and that's probably exactly what he's doing. His mother worries, and his father would probably throw him out if it were down to him. It's not once or twice that Cathal hears his parents fight over him. He closes his eyes, takes a twenty from his Da's wallet to spend on bare necessities, and walks away. Gets high. Sleeps around. Fuck all.

Things of course get from bad to worse.

His Ma starts getting headaches that make her fall and throw up for hours. She sees things, forgets names, dates and places. When his parents come home from the hospital, his father's face is gray, and his mother's smile seems forced and foreign. 

"Stage four. They say it's spread to my brain. There's nothing they can do."

That night, Cathal drinks vodka like it's water, fucks a guy called Edward who is at least thirty and likes it rough. He thinks about Arthur and about how easy it would be to just kill himself. He doesn't, and instead he chokes on pain and grief and his own vomit, gets high and falls hard and doesn't go home that night. He doesn't feel welcome. This life doesn't feel like his own.

Cathal doesn't get to be with his mother when she takes her last breath, because his father doesn't let him in the room. The funeral is held only three months after the diagnosis. During the service, his father doesn't look at him once. Later that night, they have a fight, and his father throws him out. _You broke her_ , he screams, _you killed her_. Cathal runs away faster than his legs can carry him.

He uses his inheritance (not a lot of money) to buy a small yellow car that barely works. That's where he's going to live from now on, it would seem. He starts running away from reality. He starts actively trying to give up. His life, if possible, takes a turn to the worse, and he's relieved. The sooner this is over the better, he thinks, and acts accordingly. When you let the wolf have a taste at your arm, then sooner or later, if you give him a chance, he will devour you entirely. Cathal knows the most vicious wolves in Dublin, and he knows how to get on their nerves. 

He's done. He's in pain, he's had to deal with enough shit already, and Arthur is dead. There is nothing left for him here anymore, he just wants to move on and meet his King again, with better luck next time, if possible. He has no intention of trying to be happy anymore. He's done, and he wants to go.

That's when he meets a man called Fred.

(He's almost dead in every way imaginable, bloody and beaten and _bored with this already for fuck's sake_ , when he stops for a moment to think about the life he could have had this time around. It's not anything to be proud of, what he ended up with, he realises. He looks his father in the eye one last time, hysterical, pleading for help. _It'll be a box for me._

His father, it would seem, has stopped caring, too. Cathal leaves his childhood home with no-one left for him. It's a good place to be, he figures, not caring. Hurts a bit less.

When he lies next to a bonfire, staring at the fireworks painting the black sky, relief running through his veins, easing the pain and making it effortless to let go, he thinks about the times he was happy. And, of course, it's a good thing that he has been, mostly because of how sad he was later. Merlin thinks about Arthur and it burns. Cathal thinks about Fred and hopes that his friend is happy now, because he, too, will be sad later. 

When his heart stops beating, he forgets everything.)

**Author's Note:**

> There is a sort-of playlist for this fic, and it can be found [here](http://snakesinthetardis.tumblr.com/post/21165093537/and-this-never-will-be-right-with-me-and-now), in case somebody is interested.
> 
> Also, there is this wonderful Doctor Who quote. _Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later. The answer is, of course, because they a re going to be sad later._ I might have been a tad inspired by that.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [He Walked With Dreams and Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138270) by [stella_bella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stella_bella/pseuds/stella_bella)




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